Thursday, January 3, 2013

We know marketers are always looking to run better search campaigns by going bigger, moving faster, and taking new opportunities across formats, devices, and channels. Our mission with DoubleClick Search is to help them do that. Over the past year, we’ve further invested in making DoubleClick Search a best-in-class platform for search management to meet the needs of agencies and advertisers. We’ve often called 2012 our year of transformation: after rebuilding DoubleClick Search from the ground up in 2011, our team focused 2012 on delivering powerful tools to make managing the world’s largest search campaigns more efficient and effective than ever before. Our goal is to make search simple -- providing easier, smarter, and faster ways to manage your campaigns -- and integrate it with your broader digital marketing efforts in the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.

With this vision in mind, we’re kicking off the new year with a new look to our website, and a continued focus on investing in a search management platform that will save you time, get great campaign results, and help you make better digital marketing decisions. In the spirit of self-betterment, we invite you to join us in resolving to make 2013 your best year yet. Here are a few suggested resolutions to improve your life as a search marketer:

I will remember important dates. Keeping track of anniversaries, birthdays, and other special occasions can be tricky enough. While Google Calendar can help you organize your personal events, DoubleClick Search has you covered the rest of the time, giving you reliable access to your campaigns on any day of the year without the worry of extended downtime and missed opportunities. Backed by Google infrastructure, DoubleClick Search is up and running when you need it most -- during critical dates like Black Friday, Christmas day, and throughout the holiday season. We’ll keep the lights on throughout 2013, so you can worry about finding that perfect anniversary gift.

I will go to bed earlier. We get it; there’s just not enough time in the day. On top of back-to-back meetings, lunch dates, squeezing in some gym time and having dinner ready by 7, the last thing you want to do is manage a campaign that needs to go live at midnight. With DoubleClick Search, we help you get your life (and your search ads) on track with a set of scheduling features, including scheduled sync, scheduled UI edits, and scheduled upload sheets to effortlessly automate campaign changes around the clock. Coupled with easy bulk operations in the interface and ID-less uploads that have lowered bulksheet errors by 50% [cite: internal Google data], save time and your sanity by cutting out repetitive tasks. Go on and catch those extra zzz’s -- we’ve got it covered.

I will save more for a rainy day. So you really, really want that new pair of shoes -- but resisting temptation can be hard. Ease your way into fiscal responsibility with DoubleClick Search Budget pacing reports, which allow you to keep track of your monthly search budgets at a glance. Visualize week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends to quickly identify search campaigns that are under-spending or underperforming, and adjust keywords, bids, or budgets accordingly. (Now after setting up your Budget pacing reports, go out and get those shoes -- you deserve them!)

I will be a better listener. No smartphones out during dinner. No talking over your friends. And no more ignoring key search insights. Just as listening to your friends and colleagues can mean more opportunities to develop better personal relationships, listening to your search campaigns can help you nurture better campaign results to meet your business goals. Our Performance Bidding Suite offers a variety of transparency features into the bid optimization process, including bid rationale, preview intended bids, chart bid history, and primary constraint to help you get down to the nitty-gritty of what might or might not be working. Are your min and max bids too constrained? Is your goal too aggressive? Just lend us your ear and we’ll help you discover those insights.

I will spend more time with family. Your family is important -- they’re your bedrock, your confidants, and your circle of trust. That unified sense of integration and understanding is important to us, too. Because we know that search is one piece of a broader digital marketing “family,” we built DoubleClick Search to natively integrate with our display ad server, demand-side platform, and our rich media and analytics platforms -- all a part of DoubleClick Digital Marketing -- to help you take advantage of more opportunities across channels. Use Display remarketing from search ads to “close the loop” on paid search efforts, showing users display ads across major ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across the Google Display Network. Then, call your mom. She misses you.